Shaking Up the Fish Family Tree: 'Living fossil' not as old as we thought

The international research team was led by Sam Giles of the University of Oxford and includes University of Michigan paleontologist Matt Friedman. A paper summarizing the findings was published Aug. 30 in Nature.

A new study that used CT scans to probe three-dimensionally preserved fossil fish skulls shakes up the fish family tree by concluding that the emergence of polypterids occurred much later than researchers had thought. The findings also suggest that the origin of all modern ray-finned fish may have occurred tens of millions of years later than is generally believed.